


Through the Fog

by aurilly



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Calormen, Crossover, Golden Age (Narnia), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22609594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: Psmith and Mike go on a short sail that takes them much farther away from Cambridge than they ever expected.
Relationships: Mike Jackson/Rupert Psmith
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Through the Fog

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prinzenhasserin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts).



"Well, this is rather rum," Mike said.

"I couldn't have stated the case more succinctly myself, Comrade."

For the situation was indeed quite rum, although others, those made of flabbier stuff than Mike and Psmith, would probably have summed it up more dramatically than that. They had gone punting on the River Cam with some other chaps from their dormitory, one last lark before the herculean effort of learning an entire semester's worth of wisdom in the week before examinations. 

Psmith had made quite a fuss, for him, about wanting to go out today. He'd uncharacteristically packed a picnic, reserved the boat, organized everything with more nervous energy than Mike had ever seen him exert. It was as though he had something particular on his mind—though what, Mike could not guess. 

Mike, ever competitive, had failed to keep to the leisurely pace of the other boats, those commandeered by less sure-footed (and more inebriated) gondoliers. He and Psmith—more of a coxswain than a passenger, though less shouty about it than the usual coxswain—had quickly eclipsed the group and sailed off ahead, far out of sight. Mike, as usual, had been too lulled by the endearingly eccentric speeches with which Psmith regaled him to pay close attention to the route. Only too late did he realized he must have made a wrong turn after the Bridge of Sighs—even though he hadn't ever noticed a turn to make there at all. And then, he saw, thinking back, that thicket of trees _had_ been rather tight, too tight to marked a point on the well-trod itinerary; perhaps they'd been meant to turn right at that bit. Even later, distracted by a family of ducks and Psmith's impassioned opinions on this season's spats, he had had to crouch his tall frame down to drift through a thick fog that had suddenly rolled in to spoil the previously sunny day.

So, it had been an odd sort of journey, but no amount of wrong turns could properly explain how they had set out from Cambridge and ended up _here_. The stretch of river they found themselves on when they emerged from the fog was lined with pleasure houses on one side. Bougainvillea dripped down from riverbank terraces and extravagant flower boxes. Exquisitely crafted and carved sailboats with colorful canopy covers bobbed beside private docks. Wafts of perfume scented the air, but failed to completely eradicate the horrible hints of stench—a stench Mike had only ever smelled in the very worst parts of London. 

But what confirmed that they had ended up somewhere other than Cambridge—than London, even—was the _other_ side of the river. Uninhabited and bustling with carts and wagons, the landscape stretched eastwards. Instead of the green forests and hills surrounding the university, Mike saw something golden and hazy and strange in the distance. 

"What do you think that is?" Mike asked.

Psmith followed his gaze to where Mike pointed the oar, and said, to Mike's disappointment, "It would appear to be a desert. I had heard that it grows every year, but I did not think the Sahara had spread all the way to Sussex. At this rate, I shall have to advise my father to trade his new Benz for a camel, and his prize rhododendrons for succulents." 

"I can't understand it."

The more Mike looked, the more he saw that they could no longer be in England. The merchants driving carts on the adjacent road were all darker-skinned fellows, black hair poking out from under their pointed helmets or softly wound turbans. A flash of curved steel here and some pointed boots there suggested the near East, but not _quite_ right, not quite what he'd seen in the picture houses. 

So they sailed on, carried by the placid current of this river that seemed less and less like the Cam. Mike simply stood, holding the oar like a statue, his muscles as frozen in confusion as his brain. Luckily, the current was slowly steady enough and the river around here untrafficked enough that he didn't need to do much steering. Mike was hating every moment of this, every moment in this odd dreamscape. He loathed sticking out, and never in his life had he stuck out as sorely as he did right now.

Psmith, for his part, leaned back in his seat as though nothing at all were amiss. 

"We seem to be attracting some little attention," he noted lightly, as though thoroughly enjoying the experience of being peered and point by the travelers on the road and by the turbaned ladies walking in their gardens. "Though I cannot tell if it is for our looks or for our mode of transport." 

A shrill voice belonging to an excited boy cut through the air. 

"King Edmund, come look!"

At least these people spoke English, Mike thought with relief. Even if it was English with an odd sort of accent.

They were now approaching the largest and by far grandest of the riverfront gardens. A jolly sort of boy, no older than the littlest fags at Wrykyn or Sedleigh, leaned over the balcony. At the sight of Psmith and Mike's stately approach, he dropped the bunch of grapes he had been biting off one at a time into the river. His eyes gleamed with the mischief of a great ragger. Had Mike been less confused and a little bit younger, they might have been bosom friends within the afternoon. 

The boy walked alongside the slowly moving boat.

"Well, you're awfully late joining us. Are you the additional lords my father wrote to say were coming? I thought I knew all the court lords, but I've never seen you before. Well, whoever you are, you can come as late as you like, if you always make such a splendidly silly entrance. Where in the world did you get such a boat and such clothes?" he asked, as though they were acquainted. 

"From the Trinity boathouse." Mike answered the only one of the questions he understood, and received a stupefied look in return. He looked to Psmith, who had always been the equal of any situation, no matter how baffling, for support.

Support, in the form of a bland smile and monocle eye, arrived on cue. "It is always a pleasure to be mistaken for members of the highest nobility. My mother, in her childhood, had a nose which was thought rather common, despite resting squarely in a lovely face. She worried, when I was little, that I might inherit it. I will inform her post-haste that strangers in strange lands have found my visage inherently noble. Comrade Jackson, of course, has only the bluest blood chugging merrily through his healthy veins."

And then the second fair-skinned person they'd seen since emerging from the fog came to stand beside the boy. He wore a thin band of gold in his curling hair, and his beard was a mere soft golden shadow on his lightly tanned face. But even at a distance, Mike could make out the freckles of a pale Englishman anywhere.

"This talk… these clothes… this style of seacraft…" he said, as though his mind were stuck in the same fog that Mike and Psmith had traversed. "It runs in my mind that I have seen and heard the like before." 

Mike thought it likely enough, for all that this young man, unlike the boy, spoke in the crisply familiar accent of his West End friends. 

"Yonder youth," Psmith said, parroting the strangely antiquated cadences of his interlocutor, "addressed you as 'king'. Do I have the pleasure of addressing the ruler of this charming metropolis?" He stood as he spoke, almost upsetting the boat in the process, but quickly recovered with his usual grace. 

"Good lord, no, and that is not the sort of joke one should make," replied Edmund. He looked around in a strange manner, as if to ensure that he and the boy were the only ones within earshot. "Though your faces hold no mirth, and therefore I do not think it was meant as a joke. If you could harbor such a supposition in earnest, then you are very lost indeed. There is a mystery here, one which stirs me. Pull up, why don't you? There's a good man," he said as Mike began turning the boat, using the oar for the first time since coming out of the fog.

In the distance, what must have been servants made motions to assist them, but the boy waved them away with more self-assurance than normal in one his age. "Don't trouble yourselves. King Edmund and I can see to it." 

Both the boy and this Edmund person jumped down to the dock to help Mike tie the boat to the pier. Psmith stepped out lightly to shake the man's hand. 

"It is as Corin here supposed," the king whispered quietly between them. "If anyone asks, you are late-arriving lords from Archenland, here to join our joint diplomatic visit to Calormen. Do you understand?"

"I understand less than I do about the treatise I wrote last week, but this is not the kind of rag to sneeze at," Psmith replied. "I will follow your lead."

With that affirmation, the king began slapping Mike and Psmith on the backs. "I'm Edmund, by the way," he whispered before continuing in a louder, more regal voice, "Such a delightful entrance our friends made! In their strange boat and with their strange clothes. Laggards, always, these two, eh? Get them wine, fix them a plate of the best our banquet has to offer."

The servants ran to do the king's bidding. Psmith made himself at home. Meanwhile, Mike stared at the man, because he felt as though he'd seen him somewhere before.

"What are your names, friends?" Edmund whispered as soon as the servants had left them alone again. "And from where do you hail?"

"My name is Psmith. The P, you'll understand, is silent. It's nothing to your crown, of course, but we Psmiths carry our P with pride. My friend here is Comrade Jackson. Do not let his current silence or guise as boat ferry fool you. His is the most cunning intellect, and the name of Jackson is renowned through the land as a force to be reckoned with."

"Are you warriors, then?" Corin asked excitedly.

"Cricketers," Mike said blandly.

Corin continued to gape, but Edmund stood up, if possible, even straighter than his previously ramrod regal posture. 

" You're from… blast, that other place. Whence my brother and sisters and I stumbled, where we resided in the dark time before our lives here began. Aren't you? England." Edmund shook his head, and when he opened his eyes again, they were cleared of whatever confusion had obscured them before. 

"If England is 'other', then where, pray, are we now?" Psmith asked, taking on the rather irritatingly Shakespearian, in Mike's opinion, tones of their host.

"Tashbaan, capital of Calormen. The empire that lies to the Southwest of Narnia and Archenland, the lands of which I, and my companion here, are, respectively, king and prince." 

Corin didn't much look like prince of anything, but Mike didn't dare argue, not when he could barely follow the conversation. Edmund must have correctly read the look on his face, because he started to laugh.

"Don't worry, friends. You'll catch on soon enough. I will ensure an easier passage than I experienced. For I read honesty in your faces, which is the main requirement." 

"And what sort of difficult passage did you experience? Our sailing was easy enough, but perhaps you cam through the Northwest Passage?"

Edmund laughed again. "Such names such as I have not heard this many a year. Oh, I cannot wait to hear everything. Is the war over? Surely it must be, as so many years have passed. Pray, tell me that the Allies won and that Britian was victorious."

"So many years?" Mike asked. "It's only been going on for about three."

"That does not follow. It had only been waging for three when I left. And I have been in Narnia for almost fifteen years." 

"Ah, here comes Queen Susan, with that dratted Rabadash," Corin grumbled. "And we'll have no more of this odd talk, because he'll kill it with a glance. You have no idea how I've wanted to meet someone from where you come from. And now here they are!"

"Tosh, boy. You were better raised than to insult your betters and your hosts in such a manner," Edmund said, though his voice dripped with the same disgust that Corin's had. "Poor manners, though a perceptive eye. Now, you two, remember your roles in front of him, for he is crown prince of this vast land, and…" Here Edmund lowered his voice. "In my mind, not at all to be trusted. But when he has left our party, we can speak with her in confidence." 

A startlingly pretty woman and the handsomest, haughtiest man descended the ornamental steps and approached them. Unlike Edmund and Corin, who looked rather like normal chaps, this pair looked ripped from the pages of mismatched medieval tales. 

"And who are these?" the man asked. 

"New arrivals from Archenland your highness, Rabadash. They came in quite a funny state, as a lark, you know. May I present to you and my dear sister Susan the lords Psmith and Jackson."

His haughtiness somehow managed to sneer down at them, despite being a couple of inches shorter. He hadn't yet opened his mouth to speak, but Mike felt certain he had never met such an arrogant tosser in his life. Even at his best, he'd never known how to talk to people to whom he took a violent dislike.

Thankfully, he had Psmith, who had never felt a challenge talking, in any situation. He didn't even blanche at the fact that Edmund had just called the queen his sister. 

"We thank you for the hospitality in your city, of which we have so far seen only the riverbank. But the strength of Calormen's commerce impressed is."

"Smith and Jackson?" Susan asked, casting a curious look at her brother, a larger question in her voice. 

"They hail from that, er, that region we spent so much time in, when we were younger," Edmund said, winking on the side of his face that Rabadash could not see. "You know. Frightfully wet weather."

"Hm, yes, of course. Such lovely games of hide and go seek we played in those vast estates," Susan replied, her eyes widening only a touch before she resumed her mask of serenity. "Charmed to have you here. I look forward to news from home. Your home, I mean."

Psmith fairly twinkled at all of the double speak. "I do believe I'm going to like it here." 

Mike repressed a groan. The only thing keeping him trying to wake himself from this nightmare was the reassuring pressure of Psmith's hand upon his. He didn't remember when it had gotten there, and frankly, he should have felt rather shocked to feel it. But with everything going on around him, he wasn't about to give it up for the world. 

"You will like it better this evening. I am putting on a party for my beautiful Queen. It will be a great night for lovers," Rabadash said, looking at their joined hands. "You two, of course, will attend. I shall have seats arranged for you with the other couples. There will be songs and poetry and kissing dances." Only he could manage to make an invitation sound like a command. However, there was an even more startling aspect to his speech.

"We…" Mike gasped, but then he found that he didn't actually want to refute the prince's assumptions. Not when he saw another pair of men embracing on a terrace above him. Nor when he saw Psmith's face light with joy.

"Thank you. Honestly, you have made my day much easier. I had planned to take Comrade Jackson to a little cove today, but this… I do believe the thing will be managed better like this. Thank you." 

Rabadash nodded and moved on, practically dragging Susan behind him. Mike hoped she'd snap out of the fascination soon; she seemed to sweet and intelligent to care for such a prat.

"You'll change your mind about this party once you hear the poetry," Corin muttered. "It's all ghastly."

"I have some business to attend to here, but the servants will set up rooms for you. I will come find you anon, and we shall talk." Edmund called for what appeared to be a tiger.

Mike stared at it, looking for the joins in the costume, but soon it was upon him, teeth and everything. He jumped when it spoke.

"Follow me. We will find you something to wear."

"Shall we, Comrade?" Psmith asked, looking searching at Mike, who had not spoken since Psmith's sort-of declaration.

For all his confusion, this one thing shone clear as the hot Tashbaan sun. He lifted their joined hands and gave Psmith's a kiss.

"All right," he said, with as much passion as he felt, and hoped it was enough.

It was.


End file.
